In Living World Season 3 we got the Maguuma Raid, Bastion of the Penitent. I believe that it showed us what it was like to be a soul trapped inside a bloodstone piece. The experience was told through Saul D’Alessio. (The theory goes that Saul was killed on the Maguuma stone and his soul resisted the extraction techniques of the White Mantle and their mursaat overseers. The Bastion of the Penitent is what souls trapped inside the Maguuma bloodstone refer to said stone as. I have always felt that the Bloodstone is forged from the blood of dragonkind. Hence, Samarog is a representation of the lifeforce of dragons coursing through the stone. Deimos is the tormented magic that has been strained from Saul’s soul by the Maguuma bloodstone.)

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In Living World Season 4 we flew into Kralkatorrik on Aurene’s back. We were shown a little of what it’s like to be inside an Elder Dragon. Later, in the Icebrood Saga, Aurene asked why Elder Dragons go mad. As she saw it, they all go mad. Kralkatorrik suffered from bouts of madness and rampage. Jormag seems to have gone crazy in other ways. Elder Dragons suffer from strange illnesses induced, presumably, by torment. Notso Aurene. But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t get sick; just that her sickness is different. Also, the skyscales got sick and whilst they aren’t Elder Dragons they are as close to lesser dragons as we get and remind us that creatures like this have vulnerabilities.

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If Aurene did get sick, how would we know? What would we do to treat her? Elder Dragons don’t really spend a lot of quality time with mortals - the result is that there are very few alive today, if any, who can treat the various ailments of the different species of dragon.

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All this has got me thinking…

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What if SoTo’s strange setting, Amnytas, Nayos - the Land of Dreams - Bastions and the like are mindscapes within Aurene herself? The kryptis are part of Aurene’s immune system - warding magics - reacting to some kind of bloodborne infection coursing through her veins. The characters we meet are all distorted memories of people that we’ve already met. Isgarren is Palawa Joko, Mabon is Balthazar ecetera ecetera. They are the spirits, souls, lifeforce or whatever that Aurene has consumed in one form or another. Notably, Aurene’s consumption of Palawa has finally caught up to her. Eparch is to Aurene what Samarog is to the Maguuma Bloodstone - a reflection of draconic lifeforce coursing through her. Perhaps not Aurene’s? Maybe Kralkatorrik’s, or Mordremoth’s? Who knows? It could be the strongest warding magic within Aurene’s immune system that needs to meet Isgarren/Palawa to finally understand the nature of Aurene’s ailment.

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Which brings me to Zojja. Mabon is Palawa Joko’s memory of Balthazar - or at least, the things in Balthazar that Palawa liked about him. Isgarren is how Palawa sees himself and may in fact be the true form of Joko - the all-dominating regent of Elona just one of Isgarren’s numerous disguises that he used to dwell amongst mortals, the process of Awakening so powerful because it is ancient seer magic at work and no one knows how to counter it. But Zojja hasn’t met Joko so far as we know. So where does she fit in? She isn’t just a memory, surely? One possibility is that the version of Zojja that we meet is a part of Zojja’s mind that was appropriated by first Mordremoth then Aurene when the latter absorbed the Jungle Dragon’s magic. Zojja may still be Zojja, but not in corporeal form. Her body may be elsewhere; she could be having recurring out of body experiences. How this all works right now is a bit murky to me, but Zojja may be entralled to Isgarren/Palawa, manipulated to help him overthrow Eparch and kill Aurene.

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It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out.